Factors affecting Smartphone Addiction among Elementary School Students

The purpose of this study is to clarify the factors that affects smartphone addiction of elementary school students. The subjects were 263 students, from 4 elementary schools located in G-city. Data were collected from July, 2014 and analyzed using SPSS 19.0 program. The prevalence of addiction risk group and non-addicted group were 16.0% and 84.0%, respectively. The variables which had statistically significant differences with smart phone addiction of general characteristics are grade, living together family, economic status, school record, motivation for usage, advantage of usage and using time (p<.05). There was pure correlation between the smartphone addiction and impulsivity (r=.496, p<.001), daily stress (r=.471, p<.001). However, perceived parental attitude (r=-.375, p<.001) and self-esteem (r=-.444, p<.001) were inverse correlation with smartphone addiction. Higher using time, higher impulsivity and higher daily stress were all associated with increased of smartphone addiction level. These results suggest that more attentions should be given to early adolescents and could be effectively used as fundamental data to develop intervention programs, which can prevent the smartphone addiction.